The Words He Could Never Say
by Pinstripes and Buttons
Summary: Tonks/Remus - the memory of her mother's advice guilds her years later when she must convince the man she loves how much he truly means to her.


I was always told that a smile can say more than words. Those are my mother's words, a favourite saying of hers. When I asked her why she kept telling me the same thing (oh I must have been, what, roughly fifteen. Naive? - absolutely) she had told me she heard them from an old friend of hers. One from back in her school days. I asked for a name, curious to know who, because my parents rarely spoke of their school days fondly. My mother had only smiled, shaking her head lightly. "That is something I can never tell you, Nymphadora. I promised I wouldn't, and a proper friend always keeps their promises."

"When was the last time you even talked to them?"

"Time makes little difference. If you asked a friend to promise you to keep in touch, no matter what happened, would you want them to?"

"Yes," I said, because it was the truth. There had been a summer not long ago that my friend Molly told me she'd write and I never got a single letter from her. I panicked the whole time, thinking she'd been eaten by snakes on her family's vacation.

"Even when you might never see each other for years to follow?"

"Yes," I mumble a second time, lowering my eyes. I knew what she was meaning to say before she got to the point, but I let her finish anyway.

My mother smiled at me, hardly any taller than I was. "Exactly. Think of a promise like an unbreakable vow. Even if you wanted nothing more than to break the spell, for a good reason or not, you couldn't, because it would literally kill you."

Which is why I believe, years later, I found myself standing in the cold of night, arms hugging myself to keep some illusion of warmth as I faced him. It was his smile I had fallen for not too long ago, a rare glimpse at the heart inside the man who hid away from the world in plain sight.

Now, his clothes had been ravaged by the events of the night before, and hung from his body like scraps tossed to the edge of the table by a seamstress. If he would have let me, I would have pulled him against me fiercely, but I was not a fool and I wasn't about to start acting the part of one.

"Why are you here?" Remus snapped at me. "I told you not to bother with me. I'm no good for you."

"You think I wasn't listening when you tried to feed me those lies?" I retorted, anger that he had taken such a tone with me, but understanding of the reasons behind the frustration he felt.

He ran a hand down his handsome, gaunt face. "Then why are you here?"

I lifted my chin, face to the sky and grinned like an idiot. Looking back at him, head on a tilt, I smile sadly, warmly. "Because as much as you don't want me to be, I'm never going to stop loving you. You could tell me you're the decedent of banshees and I couldn't care any less."

"Nym-"

"Don't you dare." I said softly, that smile never leaving my face completely. Bravely, I stepped toward him; he flinched, but didn't back away. Gingerly, I ran my fingers from his collar down the length of each arm, finding his hands and clasping them in my own. "Never, never, be afraid of what you might be in my eyes. Don't ever let yourself believe that I see a monster in you, not for one bloody moment because that is the furthest thing from my mind when I look at you."

Pulling his arms around me, I step flush against him, bowing my head against his chest and coiling my own arms around his waist. He smells like home and earth and love, and breath him in deeply until my mind remembers little else.

"Will you ever think otherwise?" he whispers, his voice scarcely stronger than a tremble, terrified of my answer.

There are many words I could have brought to voice, but none of them would have been any near adequate enough for what he needed to understand in that moment. Curving my back so I can face him and keep the connection between us, I smile and see the reflection of my need for him in his dark eyes. Our lips meet before I can think of air, and all the passion that I have for the man is matched three fold by him, and somewhere in the fireworks, I can feel him smile into the kiss.

All the words he could never have said.


End file.
